Native American Lesbian Star Myth

Here is a Yokut story, “Pleiades and Taurus” (1940), from Jim Elledge’s anthology of Native American Two-Spirit tales Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Myths: From the Arapaho to the Zuni (Peter Lang Publishing, 2002), that serves as a Creation Myth for the star-group in Taurus, as well as the recounting of a resolute band of Native American Lesbians and the lengths to which they went in order to form an all-Female society. As well, the story is interesting for its use of Magickal talismans.

We are told that the Michahai, Waksachi, Choinimni, Wobonuch, and Patwisha all told this story, each localizing it to a specific rock in their territory. The Waksachi placed the tale at a large rock flat called Koiwuniu. We are further told that there were seven young wives who lived with their husbands, who went to this rock to picnic together while their husbands hunted- for these women (we are told) were “homosexual.”

Finding their husbands unattractive, the women conspired stratagems to avoid them, such as smearing their mouths with raw onion so as to make their breath unpleasant. Then- “planning to leave their men permanently”- they climbed to the rock one day; each had as her “talisman” an “eagle-down rope.” These talismans they all lay in a row, standing on them. The group’s “ringleader” (the High Priestess, perhaps?) threw her eagle-down rope into the air, where it caught in the center, leaving the ends dangling down out of the sky. The women fastnened these ends to the ropes upon which they stood and “called upon their talismans to help them,” by singing. The ropes ascended into the air, and the women were swirled up higher and higher. The people saw them sailing away and and tried to bribe them to come back- to no avail.

However, their husbands had also eagle-down ropes, which they used as their wives had, and so were soon sailing through the sky after them. The women saw them coming, and shouted at them to stay right where they were. The women were serious; “they did not want to go home again,” desiring instead to be alone (together) in the sky.

So the husbands stopped just a short ways away, and to this day, you can see the “Young Women” (the Pleiades) in the heavens, with the “Young Man” trailing along behind.

The sort of Native American myth that Wonder Woman’s Amazons would have loved, fascinating for recognizing Lesbian Separatist desire, and for projecting it onto a star-cluster.